Never Forget
by TheDragon12
Summary: "Two thousand nine hundred and eighty-two names are engraved on the bronze," he replies, nodding at the wall that rested before them. "Almost three thousand people. Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons, daughters… All gone just like that." A Son of Poseidon's take on the day the Twin Towers fell.


**This was something I wrote in a couple hours earlier today. Each year it's really powerful to me to rewatch the events of that tragic day, and I think it should be remembered forever. Read on.**

* * *

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

She raises an eyebrow. "Isn't it a little early to do much?"

He scoffs. "Pfft, if it was to get pancakes, then there _is_ no wrong time for that. But it's not, so shut up and let's go," he finishes with a warm smile. "It's just..." he pauses. "Just something I thought of," he finishes silently.

ΩΩΩ

At first all he feels is her cool hand entwined in his. And, though hers may be cool and dry for the time being, he knows his is definitely warm and probably sweaty, too. He can't really help it; it happens every time he comes here. Besides, she's dealt with a lot grosser things in her life than holding a sweaty hand.

In a moment of spontaneous contemplation, he wonders where drooling in sleep falls on her list of gross things, relative to sweaty hands. And, he continues to muse, where those would fall relative to, say, monsters exploding in her face (looking at you, Hydra) or cleaning out the pegasus stables. There has to be quite the gap between the two, he reasons, so he should be fine. There shouldn't be any jokes cracked about his sweaty hands anytime soon.

But he's been wrong quite a bit in his life, especially when he's around her, so who is he to make such a bold assumption that he will, in fact, not be wrong?

Shaking the (admittedly-strange) train of thought from his head, he turns his attention back to her. She's rambling on about something or another—

No, not rambling, he corrects himself. She's simply… talking on end about the architectural happenings in her life that he assumes are surely fascinating to one who has any iota of understanding about columns or Corinthian Order or pergolas or pilasters or anything akin to that.

But, as he is one who _doesn't_ have an iota of understanding about said topics, he is content to simply observe her as they walk. He is content to listen to her voice as she goes on about topics that fly so far over his head that he suspects they just might be in orbit at that moment. He is content to watch as she grows animated, her hands beginning to move wildly in accordance with the exciting turn her tale has taken.

Ah, arches. That's a word he recognizes, he thinks with a hidden smile.

Now, he doesn't know what this exciting turn is that makes her hands move like that and her smile grow so large, but he's happy that she's happy, and that's good enough for him. And she's so beautiful, he notes once again. It's a very common thought, but he doesn't see why he shouldn't think that thought all the time. It's the truth, after all.

He continues to watch her, observing as she tucks several blonde strands behind her ear. He barely notices as his smile grows to match her own smile, but soon his smile falters as he remembers the reason they're walking at that moment. As the smile falls from his face, he briefly looks down and then stares off into the sky.

And what a beautiful morning it is as well: between azure sky that's broken up only by puffs of white that waft lazily along and the light breeze that ruffled his dark hair and crinkled leaves, one could hardly ascertain what day it was. If the mood of the populus could affect the weather like Zeus's own moods could, today would be a dreary day and rain would pound the sidewalk like artillery shells…

But mortals are not granted that ability, and his uncle's mood was seemingly far better that day than the collective mood of the city he lives above. It doesn't seem fair, he thinks.

He is shaken back to the present when an elbow finds his side. Jumping a little bit at the sudden contact, he blinks several times and looks expectantly at the one beside him. "Yeah?"

Her stormy gray eyes flick upwards. "Earth to Seaweed Brain, you there?"

"Er, what?" He shakes his head once more. "Um, yeah, sorry. Just zoned out a bit there."

She laughs at that, and the sound brings the smile back to his face. "You've been zoned out literally the whole time we were walking, dummy."

"Woah, hey," he responds indignantly. "I was definitely paying attention when we walked past that pizza joint a few blocks back."

She snorts, but her hand finds its way back into his hand nonetheless. "Paying attention to the smell of the food, sure. And who has pizza this early in the morning?"

"Hey now, I'm just hungry... and don't you dare question my pizza-eating habbits."

"You're always hungry."

He chuckles and raises his hands in submission. "So you got me there, whatever. But I was still paying attention to you and your crazy hands."

Ahead of them, the stoplight changes and they begin to make their way across the busy street with a small crowd of pedestrians. The faint din of horns and screeching brakes and running engines fades into the background as he looks back at her. Now, however, she's staring right at him with those eyes that he's found irresistible.

Like a basilisk, he decides, but in a… good… way? They kind of freeze you, but only because you want to keep staring into them, so does that really count? He frowns. He never was good at these philosophical questions.

"Problem, Wise Girl?"

"You," she replies simply, though the corner of her lips tug upwards in slight amusement.

He turns his attention back to her eyes (not that he was able to look away when he was caught in thought), and they're doing that thing they do all the time where it's like she's a calculator, figuring out exactly what the problem is and how to solve it.

"Too bad I'm basically a closed book, a locked chest, one of Apollo's—"

"I can read you better than you can apparently read your own homework," she retorts with another roll of the eyes.

He raises an eyebrow with a slight smirk, as if challenging her silently to figure out what's awry. He sees her determination deepen and he grins, turning his own attention back to the buildings rising high into the sky on either side of him. They're not _that_ tall, he muses. At least, not as tall as the others were. He stares at the skyscrapers ahead, yet the gap of open air is still painfully obvious, even after all these years.

The stoplight changes in front of him, and the two of them stop. More pedestrians gradually form a crowd behind them as they wait to cross the road, yet he can still feel her gaze on him, calculating.

It's a matter of moments before they're walking again, pushing deeper into the lofty cityscape once again. The lump in his throat seems to grow again as he concentrates on the matter at hand. Her gaze on him falls from his mind as it instead fills with scenes of smoke and the blaring of sirens.

It isn't long before the buildings give way to trees. An odd sight in such a huge city, but it strikes a poignant image. He smiles weakly at the sight and keeps on, aware that she's looking around, confused.

The soft sound of flowing water reaches him before the sight does, but soon they break through the trees and he sees it. He pauses for a step to take it all in: the sounds of falling water, flags rippling about their poles, birds chirping as they fly from tree to tree... the only sounds to pierce the respectfully silent air. That silence lays upon them like a heavy blanket, not suffocating but... serene. He breathes in through his nose several times before resuming his pace again towards the large, dark granite walls that rest before him.

"Where are we g— _oh_." Her voice falters then, and he notices that her grip on his hand loosens just as her mouth falls open a little bit.

He nods with a sad smile. "Oh," he repeats. Being sure to grip her hand tighter and hold her closer, he pushes ahead to where the stony monuments lie. Groves of young oak trees are passed by as the two make their way through the small forest, two of more people who are slowly trickling towards the place. The shadows of the trees are long, for the sun had risen not too long before their walk.

"I—" she begins before falling silent. "I didn't realize what day it was."

He removes his hand from hers and instead moves it to her far side, pulling her closer where he can plant a kiss on the top of her head. "No worries," he murmurs as the two stare reverently at the two acre-large squares cut into the ground. "It's early yet, none of the memorial stuff has really happened yet; don't worry about it."

"But…I still should've, you know—"

He doesn't respond immediately, instead fixing his attention on the water that cascades from each of the four granite walls, falling thirty feet into the reflecting pool at the bottom. He stares at the names engraved in dark bronze before him, feeling something catch in his throat as he focuses on it. Almost three thousand names engraved: each one an individual, each one loved by many others.

All of them torn away in a fateful morning.

"Two thousand nine hundred and eighty-two," he murmurs, turning his gaze back to the one at his side.

She stares up at him. "Hmm?"

"Two thousand nine hundred and eighty-two names are engraved on the bronze," he replies, nodding at the wall that rested before them. "Almost three thousand people. Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons, daughters… All gone just like that."

She is silent, and he suspects that she is much the same state as him: starting to become more overcome with emotion than allows you to speak. He dwells on those who suffered that day, and soon he notices that his eyes are damp.

"Were you here?" she asks quietly.

To most, that would be a vague question, but he knows exactly what she means and nods solemnly. "Tuesday morning, at a school not too far from here. Everything is quiet, we're working on some math and I don't know what the heck is going on with it."

He opens his mouth to speak before closing it, not able to find the words at first. "Suddenly the principal walks into the class and pulls the teacher out into the hallway, and when she comes back she looked shaken, so all of us got nervous. She tried to reassure us that everything was fine, but it didn't do much. I must not have heard when it happened the first time; I was probably too busy to notice. But then there was the second plane…"

He breathed in shakily. "When the towers came down… I—it was horrible. I didn't know what was going on, all I knew was that it was bad and that all the teachers were worried. A lot of the older kids looked worried too, but all I knew was that I was scared. It was so loud: like thunder, but pierced with siren upon siren. Then they started to evacuate us."

He shook his head. "I was eight."

His right hand is still wrapped around her side, and she places her left hand on top of it. "That must have been awful."

He scrunches his nose and swallows. "Yeah, well, I had my family. At the end of that terrible day, I was home with my mom; she was there to hug me and kiss me and all that. Everything was fine. Well, relatively, you know. It didn't affect me too much."

His gaze falls to the bronze again. "A lot of people didn't come home that day."

The two fall into respectful silence once more and he leads her to a different wall of the memorial. "He was a firefighter," he says quietly, pointing to a name. "He wasn't on shift that day, but he showed up as soon as the first plane hit. He helped a lot of people get to safety, even carried one out of the South Tower who had broken a leg."

He pauses. "He went back into the South Tower at nine fifty-six to help whomever he could, even though he knew it was beyond dangerous. The building came down at nine fifty-nine with him still inside it." He runs a hand through his hair and a single tear leaves a trail that glistens down his left cheek. "He was the dad of one of my best friends at that time; I had been to their apartment and everything. He was a great guy, one of the first good _dads_ I met."

She covers her mouth with her hands, and tears begin to fall from her eyes as well. Soon he points out another name. "She was the mom of another one of my classmates. She sent her son off to school that day with his lunch and a note saying how much she loved him… she worked on the ninety-sixth floor of the North Tower. She was gone instantly. Eight forty-six in the morning."

"It's so terrible," she says weakly, not able to say much more.

His nose twitches. "My city was attacked, just like when Kronos attacked it. But how many people did we lose during those battles? Not three thousand." He leans against the wall, careful that his forearms aren't resting on anyone's names but rather in between columns. "And think of how much worse it could've been if it wasn't for the firemen, the policemen, the paramedics, the random people who put their lives on the line to save people, who were willing to die doing something they've never done before just because it was the right thing to do."

"Think about the people on that fourth plane, the ones who took it back and crashed it into the field before it could reach D-C. Think of how many lives they saved, and how willing they were to do it. Like the guy who said, 'Let's roll' before they went on to save thousands of lives?" A weak laugh falls from his lips and he clasps his hands behind his head. "That's incredible," he finishes quietly in little more than a whisper.

His voice catches in his throat and he swallows hard. "They were heroes. They're what we need. We may be called heroes, but I don't know how I can ever compare to them."

She puts a hand on his shoulder. "You _are_ a hero, Seaweed Brain," she says with a sad smile, "Don't be stupid and try saying you're not."

He returns the smile before clearing his throat, trying to find the ability to speak clearly. "I fight for the ones I love; they gave their lives for strangers. I think that makes them greater heroes than I am. They were the best and bravest...and yet every year, fewer and fewer people remember their sacrifice."

"It's hard to stay apart of this world when we're entwined with our godly side," she admits. "I don't even think Chiron mentioned it that day; I heard bits and pieces from the older campers over the next couple days, but I wasn't really old enough to understand what had happened." Now she shakes her head. "Maybe because we're heroes, we're not always quick enough to recognize the mortals who are heroic."

He laughs dryly. "Growing up with the Greek 'myths', I heard about so many heroes to look up to, to mimic. But it's not Aeneas or Hercules or Perseus that I try to be like… it's these guys. They were braver than I can ever hope to be. These guys are the real heroes."

She bumps his shoulder. "I would say you did a pretty good job protecting their city; I'm sure they'd be happy with you about that."

Straightening up, he gazes out over the empty pool before him. More people have gradually funneled into the park, and now a sizable crowd mills around him. Many are carrying flowers or small American flags or other small objects with which to commemorate a fallen loved one. He smiles at what she said, before casting his gaze at the large flag flying at half-mast nearby. "Yeah," he murmurs, "maybe you're onto something."

As the sun slowly rises, the temperature begins to rise with it, and Percy strips off his long-sleeved shirt to reveal a red-white-and-blue tank top he had donned for the occasion. Not far away from the duo, a middle-aged man stands solemnly, running his fingers gently over a name on the wall before him as a tear traces its way down his face and into his goatee.

He unwinds his arm from her and simply takes her by the hand as the two begin to walk. "Even though we're Greek," he begins, looking down at her face, "I don't think we should be detached from the world we live in. This is my city, this is my country, this is my _home._ "

She nods with a slight smile. "It's pretty great." Then her gaze falls on his shirt and she begins to laugh, the sound beginning to lighten the mood. "And nice shirt."

He sticks his tongue out at her. "You're just jealous."

She laughs once more, and he joins in as the two begin to walk away. Then man standing by them catches sight of the shirt as well and offers a weathered smile. "God bless America," he says with emotion layered in his voice.

He offers the man his own smile. "God bless America," he agrees.

After shaking his hand, the two make their way away from the solemn testament of resilience and back into the city that held their hearts. They knew the price that had been paid, and they knew they would never forget.

* * *

 **Never forget the many who lost their lives this day seventeen years ago.**

 **God Bless America**

 **~TheDragon12**


End file.
